Columbia’s downfall began in a single moment in the early 50’s. When I.I. Rabi refused to let a poor Mr. Bader go to grad school in Physics part time so he could help his family out by working. Mr. Bader later became Feynman’s high school physics teacher, and taught him the principle of least action. So everyone knows that the world will still turn without Columbia.
This is a bit of a non-sequitur (not to mention silly), but I'm curious about the details. Do you have any links to this story of Rabi refusing to let Bader study part-time?
The problem, of course, it that the timing doesn't make sense at all. You say this happened in the early 50's. That can't be the early 1850's, since Bader wasn't born yet. But by the 1950s, Feynman was already long gone from high school. Indeed, he'd already devised path integrals, and so he certainly knew about the principle of least action!
You’re right somewhere in here. I’m certainly wrong about the 50’s. Columbia was a bastion of antisemitism until the 70’s, it had the world’s best Physics Dept. for a long time, but frittered it away. Meanwhile, Cornell built a world-class research university, partly on Columbia’s leavings.
